


The ones who speak the word always say it is the last

by Катя Замолодчикова (KATR3AMO)



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF, Trixie and Katya
Genre: (kind of), Anal Sex, Choking, Current bodies in their current form, Female pronouns for Katya, Fingering, Male pronouns for Trixie|Brian, Out of Drag, gender is fun and fluid, pwp?, slow burn?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:54:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24165457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KATR3AMO/pseuds/%D0%9A%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%8F%20%D0%97%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B4%D1%87%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0
Summary: "Sometimes they had time. Sometimes being patient was what she needed, being slow all she wanted. Some days, she wanted to revel in the feeling of being aroused, how it made time slow down and how it coloured everything just a slightly different hue. Some days she didn’t want the complete shift in priorities, the carelessness, the disconnection that followed her coming, so she never got herself close.But today isn't one of those days."
Relationships: Brian Firkus/Brian McCook, Trixie Mattel/Katya Zamolodchikova
Comments: 10
Kudos: 31





	The ones who speak the word always say it is the last

**Author's Note:**

> This is an exercise in the idea of Katya. I guess it counts as PWP, because there is no exposition, and I guess it counts as slow burn, because it's a 7k-word single sex scene, and I guess it counts as a one-shot because, well, it's a one-off. Not an AU, though it is not specifically set at any point in time, so anywhere in the recent-ish past or near-ish future.
> 
> I've never written about them before, so please let me know what you think. There is no current plan to continue this, but I am fuelled by comments and prompts, and there was no plan to write this either so anything can happen. 
> 
> Please come find me on tumblr @ katr3amo. I don't post often but I lurk a lot. I like to yell about gay things. I'd like to yell about this gay thing with someone. 
> 
> ENJOY! COMMENT! HAVE FUN!

Brian had weaned his way inside Katya. He so rarely happened to see her this way; she so rarely let him see her like this. But this was one of those occurrences and he'd never pass them up, never relinquish the opportunity to cross the thresholds of the doors she opened for him. She was on his bed, on her hands and knees, panting. Eyes closed, she never had her eyes closed unless she felt so deeply vulnerable, but so deeply safe. He had two fingers in her mouth, coated in her saliva and it ran down his palm to his wrist. He had his index, from his other hand, knuckle deep inside her, spreading the slick wetness of lube around, noticing how she reacted to him, how she accommodated him, how she twitched at the slightest drag of his calloused fingertips against her prostate. Always so sensitive. Always so guarded, until she wasn't. Always responsive, so responsive, to his touches. Always so attuned to herself.

He so rarely got to see this, to witness her like this.

Katya played. Katya blurred so many lines. Katya took and took and gave and gave, she always gave so much, even when she wasn't trying to. Maybe especially then. Katya lived her life taking everything in so fully, her body a vessel on to bigger and grander endeavours that she could never accomplish in a single lifetime. She navigated her life expertly, with no guidance — no guidance that were to be decipherable to others, at the very least. She took in the roles that society wanted to put on her; she absorbed those that it wouldn't want to put on her. What she gave in return was always a little different, a little blurred, a little wrong in all the right ways. Always recognizable if you knew what to look for. Always changed because nothing she came across emerged unscathed. Always fundamentally Katya. Never what you expected, but always to expect.

Katya lived her life with her energy more than she did her physicality. She took care of herself, now at least, even though she might not always have. She took care of her physical realities in ways that only she knew how. Katya bore herself, cracked herself open, gave anyone who dared to read it the book of herself. Katya invited curiosity and splayed herself open for anyone who cared enough, anyone who could see and not just look, listen and not just hear. She had no guard up, not of her own, ever; her only boundaries were those of others. If only people had cared enough to understand her and not judge, not compare, if only they had not tried so hard to understand her with their own maladapted frames of reference, they could have known her.

Katya blurred a lot of lines, in such a way that nothing could ever more than approximate her. She was the stroke of a pencil you erased and retraced a million times over, never quite getting rid of the graphite, never restoring the fiber to its original form. She was the crease on the page below when the pens were pushed too hard into the flesh and left an indent. She was the outline that lasted only but for a few seconds in memory foam. She was a dent in the fabric of the universe, a weight in space-time that just slightly distorted everything she was, the footsteps in the untouched snow when the storm was raging on and no one was in sight, the footsteps that would be covered and unseen a few minutes after her passage if you didn't know better than to look and not notice. She was the indents that her feet left in the sand, on the shore, by the beach, when she walked too close to the water in the fall so that she could experience the full range of sensations that her body could give her. Let her shiver, let her heal, let her hurt and feel. Let her experience it all, because no light is worth appreciating until it is yearned for in the darkness. Katya walked too close to the cold water and the waves licked at her feet, erasing traces of her presence as she went along, but if you were there to notice her then? You'd have known that the water knows, the water remembers. The waves might have blurred her steps but you couldn’t deny that the water was forever changed from having been one with her. The water didn’t deny anything, and Katya never denied herself it. She was one with the elements. She was a force of nature.

When you were with Katya, the rules were upended. Suspended. She made you see her, she made you see yourself in ways no one else would allow, and she did not seem to care enough to notice doing it. She just did. She usually led the dance, in her own way always. She showed you exactly what she wanted from you, without reserve, without ambiguity, she took exactly as much as she needed, never more, but never less. She was synergistic; she could fuck you and make you see god, she could give herself to you and put her own physicality aside, but never her needs. She could take what you had to give and make it hers, always hers, getting her own but always leaving you fulfilled even after she carefully emptied the entirety of you and took it all to nourish herself. She was a lover you'd never meet again, even if you were to be by her side for a lifetime, because Katya was ever changing. Katya was never the same, leaving parts of herself behind nightly, carrying only what mattered to tomorrow, never knowing until she met tomorrow what tomorrow would bring, what she would bring. She was a work in progress and beauty had never seemed so within reach, because her beauty was ever in the journey, never in the result. She would never be achieved, she never ached for it. Her love was always on her terms, but that didn't matter, because if you knew her and knew how to know her, her terms were always dependent upon her lovers’. Nothing was worth appreciating if experienced alone; everything gained in meaning once shared.

So she rarely shut herself down, rarely cracked herself open so wide to let someone else lead the way to her pleasure – but when she did, when she let him, he never could refuse such a generous offering.

She had come over on a day neither of them had anything planned. Brian had had too much time on his hands anyway, recently. Nothing good ever came of that. Katya knew, Katya always did. She had knocked on his door at some ungodly hour, too early for him, and he’d let her in with sleep heavy in his eyes, thankful for the sun hiding behind some thin clouds. He didn’t have a plan for the day, hadn’t dared to consider what it would look like. That always meant that he would spend it fucking around and accomplishing absolutely nothing. That was fine. But she had come in, crowded in, with the sort of energy akin to entitlement she so often channeled, without the brashness of it. She knew she was at home anywhere, because she had lived without one often enough to stop giving meaning to physical spaces, preferring to it the nonchalance that came from perpetual floating. Her home was others, others’, it didn’t matter when she walked in buzzing. She sat herself up on Brian’s granite top island and stretched, took in a deep breath. Her shirt rode up, just a little, just enough for Brian to look at the pale skin she uncovered, the line of dark blonde hair under her navel. He ached. He ached around her often. He always harboured some tension when she was there, and the tightness of her in his chest always made him feel more grounded, more complete, more fulfilled. He would have felt empty should he be around her without feeling the muted ache she always provided him. She closed her eyes, opened them again. Looked directly at him and silently pulled him to her, without moving, without speaking, a magnet without having to ask. She toned herself down some, to match the slow energy of him, set her hands on his shoulders. He put his on her strong thighs, on the relaxed muscles that rippled beneath the skin.

Katya slid her hands up his neck, held his face. Katya asked, in a way you wouldn’t expect Katya to be soft, “Can I kiss you?” and she’s expectant now but doesn’t push.

“You never ask,” he responds, she never did. _You never have to_ , he thinks. Katya knows that his house is hers, that his space is hers, that his body is hers. She knows he’d never say no to her. How could he?

“I’ve missed,” she starts, stops herself. It’s too much, too vague, too much room for miscommunication even when he knows her so well. That's the best thing about Katya, maybe, the way she is so direct about her thoughts. Sometimes too direct for her own good, but at least you always knew exactly where she stood, exactly where she was, exactly where to meet her. Katya didn’t have time for ambiguity. “I want you.”

When he grants her demand, it’s chaste at first, a slight peck. She keeps it short, rests her forehead against his. Breathes him in. Takes a few grounding breaths, the kind Brian knows she takes when she wants to remember the moment, be fully present, as much as she can even when it isn’t much. The kinds of breaths she takes to center herself. When she looks at him, her eyes are so big, her pupils are blown wide against the pale sea green, she’s almost unrecognizable.

Katya’s eyes are so incredibly unique in colour, Brian sometimes wonders how it’s possible. She’s iridescent, she’s opalite; if the sky is low and heavy her irises turn grey, they lose their colouration. On rainy days, the piercing, icy blues are enough to make you feel like she can read your thoughts, and she knows enough about witchcraft and enough about Brian for him to believe that she _can_. Sometimes the sun makes her eyes go amber, and Brian doesn’t understand the laser focus, the citrine hue when the beams catch her eyes. Otherwise, they’re a minty, clinical, seafoam green, like they are right now.

It’s her turn to press her lips to his and there’s a desperation to it that Brian can feel, it’s in the way she touches him, in the way she’s vibrating. She’s let her beard grow a little, the bristles coming in. He enjoys the roughness of it against his softness. She pulls herself closer to him and she’s breathless, Brian can nearly see the wheels working in her brain, working overtime. He wonders whether she’s taken her meds. Decides it doesn’t matter. She’s working too fast and when she can’t let up on her own, she comes to him and lets herself take in his rhythm so that she can start internally adjusting to match. It doesn’t happen often, but he’s seen Katya in this state enough to understand the unspoken, to viscerally be able to find the frequency she needs from him.

Katya likes to work for it a little. She likes to make him want her first. She wants to make Brian _want_ her. He knows she needs him, but he also knows she doesn’t make the first move. Katya likes the chase, the push and pull, the dramatics of courtship. That’s always a part of it, with her; she doesn’t make the first move, she makes you do it, she works you to think it’s your idea even though she always gets you exactly where she wants you. She grows hungry, somewhere deep in the confines of her body. But she doesn’t move. She doesn’t move until he pulls back, and even then, it’s him who’s panting into her skin, it’s him whose knuckles turn white when he grabs hard at the thighs beneath his hands.

He grabs, presses his fingers onto her flesh, into the hard muscles. He grabs her thighs and pulls himself flush between her knees, he wordlessly suggests that she hook her calves around his waist. She follows his lead, he slides up her body to wrap his arms around her and pull her torso close against his. She’s light in a way that doesn’t fully make sense to Brian. She’s not light, she’s solid, she’s made of muscles, she’s lean but she’s strong. But holding her doesn’t feel like it, picking her up makes sense, he doesn’t have to work to do it. She understands gravity in a strange way, as if from her, as if she could play it to do her bidding. She moves so her gravity center is conducive to helping him carry her, so that she feels airy, weightless, a spirit of light in his hold. Brian think maybe if she holds him fast enough she can melt into him, merge and become one. It wouldn’t surprise him if she were to fusion into him one day, he’d write it off as just another thing that Katya can do that the rest of them mere mortals can’t even imagine. Maybe she’s figured it all out, maybe that’s what witchcraft really is.

He picks her up from the counter and steps back. He feels her hands on his shoulder blades, outstretched, Katya’s beautiful strong hands extended, her fingers wide apart so that she can hold more of the world between them. He brings her to the room, his room, his bed and his sheets and his pillows all disheveled. He hasn’t made the bed, but it doesn’t matter when he knows that Katya knows he only keeps this many pillows for her.

He sets her down, falls a little on top of her, still holding her. She’s still holding him, and she looks into his eyes, looks for herself in them. He’s lost in the intricacy of her irises, the sapphire blue sparks against the greens, the limes, the hazels, the ambers. Katya conveys galaxies with her gaze. She must have been a nebula, in a past life. Nothing else would have contained her. She contains multitudes.

She lets go of him and snakes her hands between their bodies to grab at the hem of her own shirt. He pushes himself just enough to allow her to arch, to start undressing beneath him. Her back falls softly against the sheets again, she sits her shoulders up enough to get the fabric past her head. She leaves her arms up when she chucks her shirt off on the floor, she waits for him to finish the job. He wants to run his hands over her triceps, her armpits, down her ribcage, he wants to feel all of her, as if she might run away if she did. Her skin is warm, damp with the exertion of having come over, she probably jogged over, he can feel how her brain won’t slow down by the texture of her skin. He wants to reach in and take her heart into his bare hand and feel it beating for him. Katya knows how to make her wants his wishes. She always makes him believe it’s his idea. He knows it isn’t.

She’s set on making him remove the barriers that prevent her every pore from touching him. It’s not sexy, it’s not erotic. It’s efficient. She’s still buzzing with the energy she’d carried through the door, it’s a little less intense but still there. She still needs him, she’s still trembling. When he steps back, when she’s naked and small and vulnerable before him, she closes her eyes. She doesn’t look, not once. She sucks two fingers into her mouth, Brian hears the soft sounds more than he sees the glistening of it. He’s transfixed when she turns herself around.

Katya kneels, dead center amongst the soft fabric, Brian’s sheer curtains making the warm shadows dance on her bare skin. She sits on her haunches, reaches behind herself, presses her fingertips against herself. “You should be doing this,” she breathes quietly, “this should be you.”

“What d–,” he tries, was going to ask what she wanted but he knows what she wants. “What do you need?”

“Slow me down,” she says in lieu of an answer. She looks back then and he sees in her face, in her crow’s feet, in the soft lines that appear on her forehead when she raises her eyebrows, he sees what she’s asking for. He knows sometimes the inside of her skull is a rollercoaster. He knows she doesn’t want to be riding it, but she can’t pulls the levers. It’s easier for her to give the keys to the control room to somebody else, if only she can trust them. She trusts everyone, _a priori_ , but she’s been burned. She trusts everyone, but not with everything. She trusts him, though, she knows he can keep her safe when she herself can’t, she knows he’s kept her alive when she wouldn’t have saved herself.

He reaches for lube, he isn’t interested in fingering her dry, he isn’t going to fuck her but for spit. He coats his fingers, hopes to warm it up though he knows she doesn’t mind the cold. He kneels next to her, guides her against his thigh, presses himself against the expansion of her ribs, so that she can lean on him for balance. He works his hands in tandem; one following the pulsating line of her jugular, the taut tendons in her neck, the other tracing the swell of her ass, feeling the muscles rippling beneath the supple skin. He knows she isn’t hard yet but that doesn’t matter, it’s not what this is about. His fingers dance briefly against her cleft, the muscle, her perineum, but he knows she doesn’t want to be teased right now, couldn’t handle being patient. It’s not one of those days where everything is leisurely.

Sometimes they had time. Sometimes being patient was what she needed, being slow all she wanted. Some days, she wanted to revel in the feeling of being aroused, how it made time slow down and how it coloured everything just a slightly different hue. Some days she didn’t want the complete shift in priorities, the carelessness, the disconnection that followed her coming, so she never got herself close. If she did, he could see her talking herself down from an orgasm. What a sight that was. She’d kick back and enjoy the heat at the pit of her stomach for hours on end, how it made her aware of her heart beating, of the speed of the blood through her body, she’d be attuned to the careful balance of neurotransmitters in her brain, how it made her perceive herself, and him, and the idea of them. She had learned to observe herself as if from outside. She was able to map out the provenance of her thoughts, of separating the objective from the differently coloured glasses that her varied states of mind offered her. Most of the time, at least. She had learned that the hard way, he knew. He’d seen her struggle to learn the lessons and failing the assignments. He’d seen her spiral out.

On those slower days, calmer days, she did everything Brian wanted to do, wanted _her_ to do. She allowed him all his selfish requests, all the things he wouldn’t usually let himself think, let alone _voice_ , but she had a way of keeping shame so far away by settling herself within the walls he may have built around himself. On those days, her pleasure came from his; nothing made her happier, more fulfilled, more content than chasing _his_ pleasure. She could do it for hours, hours on end, until she eventually peeled back all the layers Brian fooled himself into thinking protected him, until he was raw nerve, prime matter for her to mold however she wanted. She never grew tired, never impatient. When he did, when he couldn’t stand the teasing anymore, when he couldn’t afford to wait anymore, she heard and made it all come to an end, and how glorious was it always. They’d lay next to one another, sweat on their brows, skin flushed from the ecstasy, chests heaving in rhythm from their scurried breaths, lead in every limb for having harbored too much tension for too long. She always made sure he came first. That was easier for both of them.

But today isn’t one of those days where Katya would get high on her own dopaminergic arousal. She has too much going on within and needed help containing it, whipping herself back into a state that would allow her to function. Brian goes for her mouth first, wanting her to taste the skin of his fingers, giving her more to focus on so that she has less capacity for the hyperactive thoughts that run too fast through her consciousness. He goes for her mouth first so that she can bite down on something when he is to push inside her, past the strong ring of muscle, so that he can feel the way she reacts to him by how her tongue behaves. He makes sure that she can taste the salt on his fingers, that he pushes far enough past her teeth that she can bite without harming him. This way she doesn’t have to worry about talking, either, and he knows that’s good for her. It gives her something to focus on. He holds her face with his thumb, strokes the hollow of her cheek. He’ll never get over her fucking bone structure.

He doesn’t tease, but he lets her accommodate him. She doesn’t do this often. He doesn’t know that she ever really enjoyed getting fucked, that she ever really managed to turn the strange vulnerability and the breach and the initial discomfort into something pleasurable. So he doesn't tease, but he makes sure to care so that she doesn't get further into the spaces in her brain that she can’t handle visiting now. His job is to take her out of there, not to lock her in.

He traces circles at her rim to get her wet, he presses in one finger. So slowly. Almost clinical. He’s careful about every millimeter that he pushes in, about how he's angled. He twists, slowly, first, making sure that lube coats her. He moves in her gently until her breath stops catching in her throat, until she exhales hot and heavy against his hand, until he feels her relax against him, around him. He knows how to work her; that’s why she is here.

Brian has Katya on his bed. On her hands and knees. Two fingers in her mouth, one inside her, feeling how she is responding, how she’s tuning back into herself.

He adds a finger once he knows she can take it, when she isn’t so wound up, once he knows that it will be good. He wants to be good, always, she deserves him being good for her. He lets himself brush ever so gently against her prostate, knowing that in other circumstances she would be fully able to wind herself up enough to finish untouched if he moved just the right way. Not today.

He doesn’t pick up his pace. He wants to hear her moans, wants to hear all the tiny thin noises she makes, those that she couldn’t prevent from escaping her lips if she tried. She’s still moving her tongue, she bites when Brian does something good. He does a lot of things good, they’ve known each other for a long time. He notes the saliva running down his forearm, eventually takes stock of wetness on his thigh. Not his. He wants more of that.

Katya trembled. She trembled often, in all kinds of situations. She trembled after she wheezed in laughter and didn’t expect to be made to laugh. She trembled when she went too long without nicotine coursing high through her veins. She trembled if she forgot a dose, if she misplaced her meds and subsequently forgot about them at all until it was too late for her to pump methylphenidate through her system. She trembled when she was happy, when she was in a good flow, when she couldn’t contain herself. She trembled when she pushed her body too hard during yoga, with her leggings hugging her small frame and her tank top sticking to her skin. She trembled when she wanted – just wanted – so profoundly that she couldn’t tame the sheer strength of her longing.

She’s trembling now, in Brian’s lap. He sees it in the muscles of her upper back, he feels it in her ribs against his stomach, he hears it in her breathing. He pulls out of her mouth, guides her down to her elbows so that she doesn’t have to hold herself up quite as much. It makes her rest her chest on his thigh. He aches for her when she arches, unwinds a fraction, he witnesses her seeping back into herself minimally. She has to start somewhere. She’s starting with things she knows, with him, with small movements she knows will make her feel better because they have in the past. She shifts incrementally but he sees her will, sees her effort, sees how she’s slowly starting to _act_ , as opposed to solely reacting to him. She rotates her hips nearly unnoticeably. Maybe if he weren’t in the process of fucking her he wouldn’t have noticed her muscles working. Maybe if he hadn’t been in a position to feel her dripping against his thigh he wouldn’t have noticed her rutting against him. He doesn’t comment on it, doesn’t want to take her out of the state of mind that she’s in, not once she’s finally started to come back into herself. He wipes Katya’s saliva off on the sheets and cradles her jaw, her strong bones cutting into him almost. He rests his hand on the side of her neck. She’s lower now, slower also, needs a bit more support. She rests against him, and it’s more than that; she’s pressing her neck into his grip.

She wouldn’t ask out loud.

She never did, but one day in the throes of laughter, after she must have had said something so hysterical and made him laugh so hard when he had least expected it, he mocked wrapping his hands around her neck. She hadn’t done anything then, only kept wheezing and laughing, but later than week he caught her in a mirror, shirtless, with her own hands exactly where his had been, and completely mesmerized. When she had seen his reflection behind her, she’d snapped around so quickly and so fiercely, pushed him backwards until his shoulder blades had hit a wall. She’d undone his belt and pulled his pants down to his ankles, gotten on her knees and taken him into her mouth, frenzied and almost desperate, yet somehow steadied and determined. She hadn’t wanted anything in return then, but Brian noticed after that day that she silently seeked his hand against her trachea, his fingers on the blood flow to her brain. She’d keep her head close to his hand, sometimes she’d relocate to press herself down against his flat palm.

She is doing that now. Brian feels the pulsations of the veins in her neck, he can hear her breathing, he can _feel_ how the tension leaves her body. He’s the grounding wire catching all the current she doesn’t know where else to send, he’s her line to the earth so that she doesn’t catch fire, doesn’t blow a fuse.

They weren’t dating. Their relationship, from the start, eluded the normal rules of dating, the choreographed seduction, the boundaries that came with commitment. Commitment didn‘t elude them, per se. Brian knew he’d never before been so unequivocally committed. To what, he wouldn’t know; but to her, there was no question. He didn’t doubt Katya’s commitment to him either, that wasn’t the point. But Katya was too fleeting, too ephemeral, too transient. She was a fugitive to time, she couldn’t be tied down. She wouldn’t be tied down. They didn’t live together; he doubt they ever would. She needed her chaos and her quiet too much to risk sacrificing it for someone else. He needed the control over his space too much for it to ever work. They never had to talk about it, they both knew.

Katya didn’t believe in happy endings. It had taken Brian a long time to figure out that she didn’t like happy endings because she was unable to see herself with one. One too many deception, she said, if she could avoid it why wouldn’t she? She preferred living in the moment, where every new dawn was a blessing, every new dusk a surprise. Katya somehow both lived as if every day were her last, while knowing she’d live forever. Her spirit was immortal. Katya didn’t want to hope for happy endings; hope had taught her too many times the pain that comes hand with hand with love. Brian knew he loved her. He knew she loved him. If speaking of the inextricable character of their threads in their joined tapestry in these terms made sense, he’d say he was in love with her, every part of her, the ones he saw and the ones he didn’t, the parts he saw despite her concealment of them to the intrigued gaze of others. It didn’t make sense, though. It didn’t capture the fateful bond between them that was sure to doom both of their destinies.

Katya didn’t believe in happy endings, so they weren’t dating.

He often pictured their relationship as a neverending routine between professional dancers, who knew each other so well neither had surprises for the other, who’d been dancing together for so long that they had developed a sixth sense of always knowing where the other was, how they felt. The link that united him and Katya was just as intuitive, just as intrinsic. It was a second skin. They were the choreography of longing and wanting and yearning and reaching for the other but never touching, they were on parallel tracks, always going the same direction but always on their own, always at a distance.

They weren’t dating. They never would be; they never had been. It wasn’t that they were scared of love, or of commitment. He wasn’t scared of her. They always would love each other in ways so deep, so captivating. It’s that their love felt so emergent, so singular, that the very concept of dyadic partnership seemed estranged to them. They had been caught in it for longer than they’d known. Brian couldn’t begin to describe their synergy, the acuity with which they saw each other. Love didn’t cover it. He knew they had always been doomed to experience the other, from the start. They had always been doomed to one another, they had been doomed to cross paths and to tangle in their narratives to a point where they were indistinguishable. They each had their own distinct thread in the tapestry, they had their own colour in the painting if you knew to look close enough, but the richness of their combination made it so that either of them on their own was dimmed to the point of unrecognition. There was no point in studying them in isolation from each other, they were the context that made the idea of their individuality make sense. They were always doomed to find each other, but their togetherness was the saving grace.

They weren’t afraid of commitment. It didn’t have to be said, they couldn’t break the oath that they’d never sworn to each other in words, it was bigger than either of them, bigger than both of them. It wasn’t that they’d never break their own backs, it wasn’t that they’d never break apart; they had, they would again. It was that there was no point in questioning the fact that they always revolved around each other and that, be it by will or by fate, they’d end up tangled together again. There was no point in trying to understand the ‘ _why_ ’ when they knew the ‘ _how_.’

They weren’t dating, because Brian knew that the very idea of dyadic partnership was ill fitting. Katya didn’t like happy endings, and Brian didn’t like the idea of defining who they each were based on the role that they each played. He had never liked the idea for two beings to need each other to reach fulfillment, to achieve wholeness. He was a full being on his own, he didn’t lose parts of him when she left, her absence wasn’t a hole in his side. And Katya, she was more than a whole. She just needed help finding it sometimes.

She may have needed help finding it that morning, but she’s on her way there now. It’s in the way she’s moving her hips so slightly, at first Brian mistakes it for carnate reactions to his touches until he realises that she’s seeking stimulation, that her movements are purposeful. She’ll angle herself when he’s pushing in so that his fingers brush where she wants him, she’ll lower herself just enough that the minute back and forth of their bodies create the smallest amount of friction where she’s made a slick puddle on his thigh. It isn’t on accident; it’s willful, though she wouldn’t admit to it, probably, but he’s not going to ask.

He knows the strength of her needs scares her sometimes. He knows it is now because of how much she is restraining herself. She’s not letting her full weight rest into his palm; she’s pressing but it’s calculated, she’s holding back. He can feel the energy bubbling up just below the surface and when she’s vibrating so deafeningly quiet, she pulls back, she pushes herself up, she pulls his wrist away to stop fucking her. The lube is still within reach, she sits up, on her haunches, she slicks herself up. She doesn’t look at him, couldn’t bear how clearly she would be able to see his eyes, knowing he could see her just as well, all sharp lines of her body, all hard planes hiding the soft parts within that she doesn’t often acknowledge. She keeps her eyes elsewhere, inwards maybe. She pushes him back, claws at his shoulder with her short nails, he wishes they would hurt him but they don’t. She settles between his folded knees and takes stock of his arousal, fully on display now, not that he’s ashamed of it. He knows his reaction to her body and has stopped questioning it long ago.

“Please tell me I can, please say you’re ready,” she breathes, a hand on his chest and the other wrapped around herself, stilling herself.

He breathes out for an answer, knows the dull ache of the stretch, lays back and raises his hips just enough to help her line herself up with his core. She hears that answer as clearly as if he’d spoken it out loud. She pushes against him, into him, and there is nothing Brian likes to witness more than the shaky breath that leaves her lungs and the trembling of her eyebrows when her mouth falls open.

He’s breathless too, now.

When she bottoms out, she leans down, still doesn’t look at him. She rests her head in the crook of his shoulder, sinks her teeth in the tight muscle of his neck, _calm down_ , _relax_ , he hears through the enamel in his skin. He wills his body to release tension, she notices it and starts moving within him. He knows this isn’t about him. She has a hand splayed on his neck, to feel his heartbeat, to measure the pulse of his jugular. To hold herself up. She has a hand curled filthily around his shoulder, snaking down his bicep, collecting the sweat at the crook of his elbow. She takes his forearm, his wrist between her strong fingers, makes him relocate from resting on her hip to diving between their bodies.

“You gotta make yourself feel good,” Katya speaks against the flushed skin of his collarbone. Brian hears the _please_ that she’s tacked on to the end of that sentence, the _because i can’t, not right now_ that she won’t speak. She’s going slowly, especially for her, as if at any moment she expected him to stop her and she didn’t want to trigger it because she didn’t know if she could take it. He isn’t going to stop her.

He isn’t going to stop himself, either, or the way his breath catches in his throat when Katya makes him wrap his fingers around himself. She breathes out a shaky exhale when he does, a silent encouragement. He knows she gets off on this, on feeling how his body responds to pleasure, on being able to share it with him. She feeds off on it, more so maybe now than ever. She’s coming back. She moans when he does, the breathless kinds of moans that sound like she tries to hold in but isn’t able to, she moves within him to the rhythm he’s setting for himself. If someone had been looking in, they’d have thought he was working on her, not on himself, based on the noises she was making.

He’s not surprised, in the sense that this streak of Katya’s is at the very foundation of her. She always reacts almost as much to others’ pleasure as she does her own. Being trusted to witness the sparks shooting through her lovers’ nerves, through their spine always got her going. She must be something of an empath, though Brian isn’t sure that she’s necessarily self-aware of that, or maybe she is and she’s stopped wondering about it long ago. It doesn’t matter right now when he feels her pay such close attention to the noises forming in his chest and traveling through his throat and sometimes making it past his lips. She’s still moving so slowly, not to tease him for once, but because she isn’t focusing on herself.

When his body tenses, when he gets tighter around her, when his breathing and his heartbeat become irregular just from looking at her, from feeling how she cracks her own ribcage open for him, from feeling her move within him, she finally looks at him. She looks down at his slick fingers, at the mess he’s making, at the trembling beneath the supple skin of his wrist. She looks at his lips, follows his exhale with her eyes the way she would, could she see the hot air leaving his lungs and joining her breath in osmosis, she looks at the light sheen of sweat on his cupid’s bow. She locks eyes with him last and he sees her, Katya, in all her glory and her strangeness and her ephemera, he sees what she doesn’t let people see even when she lets her guard down, _Katya_. He sees her completely, he sees the way she sees herself, in all her complexity that is so familiar to him that it’s become simple. In the simplicity of Katya that is so brutally honest that people often mistake it for a complex strategy to keep them at bay instead of realising that it’s where she connects with others. He sees all of her, the frenzy and the calm and the lessons she’s learned, the molten gold that she’s poured in the cracks of her bones, the cracks others have given her and the cracks that she’s given herself by wearing her heart on her sleeve, and he comes wordless when she mouths “come on, be good,” with a voice barely above a whisper. He’s raptured but she isn’t trembling anymore. She’s still, she’s found him in the eye of her hurricane and they lay there unmoving.

“Let me,” he says with a slight whine when he can string a coherent sentence together in his brain, _let me take care of you_ , he thinks, but that’s a little demanding even for Katya. “Let me in,” he asks, bringing a hand to swipe at her bottom lip, too well defined against her pale skin. He doesn’t understand her lips, how good they are. He doesn’t understand how incredibly beautiful she is, how handsome, how stunningly gorgeous in all her forms, in all her hard edges and sharp angles and soft curves.

He tests the waters, pushes the pads of his fingers into her mouth, past her lips, scrapes them on her teeth. Her gaze loses focus a little. He twists the hand that was still resting on his stomach, his messy stomach, turns his wrist so that he can dig them in Katya’s abs, scratch incandescent lines over her ribs, smooth it over her flat chest. Her pecs, the muscles in her shoulders. She rests her weight against him and starts grinding her hips again. She elicits a hissing sound from him that he tries to prevent, to no avail, but he earns a shaky exhale from her in response. He feels her breath ghosting kisses across the skin of his hand, he clenches her jaw softly between thumb and ring finger, locks her head in place. He can nearly hear the wheels turning in her head, her thoughts, how she talks herself into ecstasy with the most infinitesimal stutter of her hips, how she holds herself still but he can feel her spill inside him, how he can feel her pulse even though she tries so hard to remain completely motionless. Katya’s in her head, still, but in a good way, now. She isn’t stuck in there unable to escape, she’s taking up the space, all the space she wants, all her space. She fills it all with herself, lets the relief flood in, the endorphins, the dopamine, the noradrenaline, in a way that’s nearly akin to how he feels her fill him, too. She sucks his fingers in on the come down, he drags them across her chin, she rests her body on his and her head next to his.

No more frenzy. No more frantic energy, no more vibrating so hard that every piece of porcelain in the house threatens to slide itself of its shelf or plainly shatter. She didn’t blow the fuse. She’s grounded, she’s herself again, and Brian nearly can’t believe the sheer luck, the karma, what he must have done in a past life or the current one to be rewarded with this. With her. He doesn’t know, but he doesn’t need to. He knows he’s got her, and he knows that she knows that, and that’s not worth questioning.

He doesn’t need to know the ‘ _why_ ’ when he knows the ‘ _how_.’ He knows the _how_.’ The _how_ is breathing against him, deep, full breaths, the _how_ is expanding her ribcage against his so that they can cycle through the same breathing rhythm.

**Author's Note:**

> I am unashamedly taking requests and prompts and general ideas about other things that these two, in this incarnation, would be inclined to do. Please tell me if you liked it; what you liked about it; what you'd liked to have seen in it. Please let me know how it's made you feel, yadeeyada.
> 
> love always


End file.
